Ryan Thomas Notes On Authors

Ryan Thomas

Notes on Modernist Authors

Thomas Wolfe - Background •

Born to a father whose dreams in life were dying and a mother whose dream was that Thomas would achieve greatness

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Brother died young of typhoid; Mother dove into business and had no more time for her family of nine, now eight; father died of cancer and favorite brother of pneumonia while still in his prime, and while Thomas was still a teenager

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Fell in love with a married woman who had an affair with him, but eventually left him

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Traveled from city to city during one part of his life while searching for a publisher

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Source: http://www.nchistoricsites.org/wolfe/wolfe.htm

- Style •

Diction: No difficult words; the most arcane are “vividly”*, “arbor” *, “bellowing” *

, “enduring” *, “perplexity” *, “sallow” *, “shrill” *, “timorous” *, and out of the

nearly two thousand words in the story, only eight could possibly be slightly difficult. However, he uses very powerful words for their imagery, both positively and negatively (“mighty oaks” *, “great train”*, “all the grief, joy, peril and labor” *

, etc.); The words “sense” and “know” are used frequently throughout the piece,

possibly carrying meaningful and contradictory importances. •

Tone: Shifts; At first pleasant, speaking of the beauty of the town’s landscape and the coziness of the house (“The whole place had an air of tidiness, thrift, and

modest comfort.” (pg. 616) ) and then world-weary, speaking about the engineer’s experience (“The engineer had grown old and gray…four times he had seen before him on the tracks the ghastly dot of tragedy…he had grown seamed and weathered….” (pg. 616) ); then back to pleasant, again describing the town (“the vision of the little house…had become fixed…as something beautiful and enduring….” (pg.617) ) and finally depressed and unsettled at the end when describing the engineer’s heartbreak (“sense of bewilderment and confusion”; “houses thinned into the straggling outposts”; “why did his hand falter on the gate”; “with a sense of bitter loss and grief, he was sorry he had come” (pg. 617618) ). •

Formally written – no colloquialisms are used (pg. 616 – 618)

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Figurative language: used in nearly every sentence in the story; see above examples for support, as these are used above as examples of other elements in the story, yet are also rife with imagery.

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Grammatical Structure: no grammatical errors (pg. 616 – 618)

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Modernist elements: confusion and hopelessness (“sense of bewilderment and confusion”, “now sick with doubt”, “And he knew that all the magic of that bright lost way…could never be got again.” (pg. 617-618) ); no resolution; just the statement that “the imagined corner of that small good universe of hope’s desire, could never be got again.” (pg. 618); and disillusionment throughout ( From “the vision of the little house…had become fixed…as something beautiful and enduring….” to “the imagined corner of that small good universe of hope’s desire, could never be got again.” (pg. 617 – 618)

- Textbook Element •

Point of view: Third person limited (author speaks only from the engineer’s perspective but as a bystander, albeit with insight into the engineer’s perspective); only one or two instances where this may not have held true: “the woman invited him almost unwillingly”, (pg. 618) which tells us of the woman’s emotions, and “the two women stared at him with a dull, bewildered hostility, a sullen, timorous restraint”, (pg. 618) which again tells us of feelings which are not the conductor’s; however, these seem to be deductions of the engineer, not external information only gleamed by the narrator through omniscience. This allows for the main character to be viewed impersonally to a degree, and makes him a possible archetype for those who lose hope in life.

T. S. Eliot - Background •

Never felt at home anywhere; “[I] always felt like a New Englander in the Southwest, and a South westerner in New England”

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Indecisive at times; “As a freshman, his courses were so eclectic that he soon wound up on academic probation.”

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“Among his teachers, Eliot was drawn to the forceful moralizing of Irving Babbitt and the stylish skepticism of George Santayana, both of whom reinforced his distaste for the reform-minded, progressive university”

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“In December 1908 a book Eliot found in the Harvard Union library changed his life: Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1895) introduced him to the poetry of Jules Laforgue, and Laforgue's combination of ironic elegance and psychological nuance gave his juvenile literary efforts a voice.”

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Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm

- Style •

Diction: Uses very elevated language (quote from Dante, “etherized”, “tedious”, “insidious”, “formulated phrase”, “digress”, etc.)

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Tone: Uncertain and depressed (“The mumbling retreats/Of restless nights in onenight cheap hotels” (pg. 708); “Time yet for a hundred indecisions,/And for a hundred visions and revisions,/Before the taking of a toast and tea” (pg. 709); “Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/In a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” (pg. 709) )

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Formally written – Use of elevated diction and no contractions (pg. 708 - 712)

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Figurative language: Much personification (“yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes” (pg. 708) ) and use of unusually eclectic imagery when expressing grand ideas (“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” (pg. 709) )

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Grammatical Structure: Uses repetition within stanzas, to establish links between thoughts, and between stanzas, like the phrase “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” (pg. 708)

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Modernist elements: confusion and doubt (“Then how should I begin/To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?” (pg. 710) );

no resolution; just another thought with no explanation: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Till human voices wake us, and we drown. (pg. 712); and supposed disillusionment (“For I have known them all already, known them all” (pg. 709), “And I have known the arms already” (pg. 710), “I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;/I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,/And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,/And in short, I was afraid.” (pg. 711) - Textbook Element •

Stream of consciousness – Every idea expressed is fleeting, under-explained, and seemingly only significant in that it contributes to a growing feeling of indecision, despair, and meaninglessness; a sentence is written, and the one that follows seems to have little or no continuity with it, or a sentence which sounds absurd or nonsensical without clarification is left so. Examples: “And indeed there will be time/For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,/Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;/There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” (pg. 709) ; “And I have known the eyes already, known them all—/The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,/And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,/When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,/Then how should I begin/To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?” (pg. 710)